Hanif Kureishi (1954-), Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE): Wow! The only time I ever met him was before he had published any books, so I have a signed copy of the issue of Granta on the title page of his story "With My Tongue Down Your Throat." The author of that and of the screenplay for "Sammie and Rosie Get Laid," the quintessentially postcolonial writer is only one step away from being "Sir Hanif"!?

Well, Karim Amir (Naveen Andrews [The English Patient, Lost]), the narrator of Kureishi's first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990, which won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel) and the protagonist of the 1993 BBC miniseries based on it (running 220 minutes, on two discs), introduces himself by saying: "Englishman I am (though not proud of it), from the South London suburbs and going somewhere". Like Kureishi, Karim has a WASP mother and a Muslim, Pakistan-born father. The Kureishis were part of the elite in Pakistan and the Amirs also seem to be. But neither had elite status in England.

Hanif Kureishi graduated from Bromley Technical High School where David Bowie, seven years his senior, earlier went. (Bowie is not only an idol of the young Karim, but performs the title song and made a music video on the streets of Bromley that is included on the DVD.) Karim and Kureishi and the son of Karim's father's mistress Eva Kay (Susan Fleetwood {The Krays]), Charly (Steven Mackintosh {Care]), whom Karim services in various ways over the years covered by the book and movie, are besotted with pop music: first the Beatles, then David Bowie and glamour rock, then punk.

The title "Buddha" is Karim's father, Haroon (played by Roshan Seth, who also played the father in Kureishi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "London Kills Me" and the father in "Mississippi Masala" and "Monsoon Wedding" and Nehru in "Gandhi"). Despite being Muslim, he becomes a popular guru for middle-class Brits feeling a need for spirituality. Haroon is not taken in by his act, nor is Karim, and Karim's mother/Haroon's wife Margaret Amir (Brenda Blethyn) pays so little attention to it that she does not even appear to be jealous of the time away — and that the time away is intimately bound up with the mistress who is promoting Haroon as a guru.

Eventually, Haroon, Eva Kay, Charly, and Karim move to a rundown London house (in West Kensington in the book). Charly becomes a punk rock star, Karim becomes a fledgling actor in an experimentalist troupe run by a rich Trotskyite manipulator, Matthew Pyke (Donald Sumpter). Matthew arranges for Karim to have his wife, so that Matthew can have the actress with whom Karim is in love and sort of living with, Eleanor (Jemma Redgrave). The successful play goes to New York, and Karim stays on for a while as Charly's manager, eventually returning to London and taking on a soap opera role.

What happens to Haroon's career as a spiritual guide to lost Brits is not clear. Both his wife and his mistress suffer histrionically.

A major side plot involves the "liberated woman" cousin, Jamila (Nisha K. Nayar), who accedes to an arranged marriage to a ludicrous, roly-poly imported groom Changez (Harish Patel, who also appeared in "My Son, the Fanatic" and in the abominable "Kama Sutra" in which Andrews starred) so that she can get out of the house and shop of her oppressive, old-fashioned father. Much of the best comedy and Andrews's full-frontal nudity (which is so dark that it is impossible to tell if he is circumcised) flow from this. (In contrast, the full-frontal female nudity, involving Anglo women, is very brightly, even harshly lit.)

As a Bildungsroman, "The Buddha of Suburbia" is a disappointment. Karim observes the antics of others, including his relatives (and quasi-brother Charly), feels some of their pain and unease of his own, but does not really grow: that is, there is no "bildung." His settings change, and the music changes, but Karim remains a cypher -- a very attractive, very photogenic cypher, but a cypher nonetheless.

In the first part, the relations of Karim's elders as seen by him are more interesting than the second part, which focuses more on his own drifting into acting with a treacherous father figure.

Although I was somewhat disappointed by the meandering second part, the nonconclusion is very much that of the novel, which ends as follows:

"And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be that way."

Why not, I wondered when I finished the book. After watching the movie, I could watch the David Bowie music video.

The tv-movie is not impressive visually. The illustrations of racial confusion are not particularly original or insightful, but there are some fine comic performances and lots of opportunities to look at Naveen Andrews.

Kureishi's first two filmed scripts were directed by Stephen Frears. Since directing "Buddha of Suburbia," Roger Mitchell (who was raised in Syria) has also directed scripts by Kureishi for "Mother" (2003) and "Venus" (2006), as well as adaptations of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love and the 1995 BBC version of Jane Austen's Persuasion (in which Susan Fleetwood played Lady Russell. He seems to be good with actors and to have literary tastes with no particular visual flair.

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© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

Other Kureishi reviews I've posted here:

the novel(la) Intimacy (1998)
shorter fiction collection Midnight All Day (1999)
the novel Gabriel's Gift (2001)

the film of his story My Son, the Fanatic (1997; the story was included in Midnight)
the film of Intimacy (2001)

Kureishi's most recently published (in the UK) novel, Something to Tell You will be available here 19 August, BTW. At 384 pages, it is clearly not a novella!




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD